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Author Topic: Anyone Else Here Run a Long-Term non-Fantasy Western Campaign?  (Read 7963 times)

RPGPundit

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Anyone Else Here Run a Long-Term non-Fantasy Western Campaign?
« Reply #75 on: June 30, 2017, 06:34:09 PM »
Quote from: Voros;971482
Correct me if I'm wrong but no major Western film or book is that historically accurate, so why should a RPG be so?


Every film takes some poetic license, but there's different degrees of historicity.  Some movies happen in "wild west land" with no concern at all for history; and essentially are a genre in and of themselves.  It's certainly valid to say you want to run a campaign of the Cinematic Wild West, as opposed to the Historical Wild West.  You should just admit that this is what you are doing.
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Anyone Else Here Run a Long-Term non-Fantasy Western Campaign?
« Reply #76 on: June 30, 2017, 06:36:14 PM »
Quote from: Justin Alexander;971584
I have three general observations to make:

1. If your definition of "alternate history" means that all historical fiction is alternate history, your definition has prima facie failed because the entire reason the term "alternate history" exists in fiction is to distinguish it from historical fiction in general.


No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that "it's the wild west, only the confederacy never fell but they're not racists!" is in no way historically accurate. I really wonder at the people who think they have to object to such an obvious statement.
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cranebump

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« Reply #77 on: June 30, 2017, 10:45:53 PM »
I can't make a definitive claim in the definition of "alt-history," but, I agree with JA in that, any alternative has to turn on an event which changes the original outcome (which, if I remember right, is also called a "counterfactual?") Cor instance, the "What if...?" series posited 13 ways The U.S. Could have lost the Revolutionary War (quite a few of of which involved Washington getting captured or killed, or some other such thing). They present the situation, then posit the effect, with more than one example focusing on someone being removed from the situation (EX:the anecdote about Churchill nearly being run over by a car [if I remember right]). I would think an alternative history would have to turn on some event for which a substantially different outcome has a "plausible" cause (City on the Edge of Forever?).

Historical fiction, on the other hand, doesn't present alternative outcomes, but rather places fictional characters in the actuality, or crafts story using real folks, positing what they might have said or thought, intertwined with the facts (a la "Killer Angels").

So, if you place fictional characters in a real historical setting, actual historical events occur (are simulated), and their effect on major events is non-existent, then you have historical fiction. If the setting is accurate, but not really geared toward events that make a difference, then, to me, that's just plain fiction. It's the difference between characters fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg, participating in Chamberlain's desperate bayonet charge, and characters fighting in some location in the wilderness, with the war as setting alone, and the battle not making a difference.

But, really, this is just splitting hairs. I don't think most players give a shit whether they're in the actual El Dorado, or whether Dark Albion is 100% accurate. All that is secondary to the fun.

Or should be, anyway...
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cranebump

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« Reply #78 on: June 30, 2017, 11:00:25 PM »
Quote from: RPGPundit;969492
I mean, you get that I wrote a little book called Dark Albion.
 Which is both the most historically-accurate RPG book ever written on 15th century England, and also has frogmen and dragons in it.


I'm curious-- how many other rpgs were attempts at an accurate 15th century England? Because if yours is the only one...

Quote
Anyways, over here, my  historical games are beloved and in huge demand on account of being enormously fun BECAUSE of the careful historical research.  Even the ones that have frogmen in it. Maybe especially those ones..


Are you're trying to say your frogmen are more fun thanks to the "careful historical research?" Because that just sounds...well, I dunno what that sounds like.

Thanks for making RPGs great again, though.:-/
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« Reply #79 on: July 01, 2017, 07:19:53 PM »
Quote from: cranebump;972437
IAre you're trying to say your frogmen are more fun thanks to the "careful historical research?" Because that just sounds...well, I dunno what that sounds like.


He makes the best games. Their success is bigly. Those storygame LOSERS just can't handle how... Did I mention that they're swine? Real swine. Oink. Oink. Like Rosie O'Donnell. There was a study done-- This is true. There was a study done that swine can't play a game unless they-- They can't even roll the dice, right? The dice. I own gold dice. They're the best dice. Lou Zocchi's dice are actually based on molds taken from my dice. He borrowed them from me back in 1973 when I was playing with him and Gygax and Marc Miller in Lake Geneva. I told him-- I told him, "Gary. I think you've got a winner here." That's what a real RPG looks like, right? Me, Marc, and Lou in a basement in Lake Geneva. Now, of course-- Forget the file cabinet. I play in Brazil. Boys of Brazil. They knew how to run a wargame. Don't-- Don't get into a game of Advanced Squad Leader with Adolf. That's what we used to say. Huge demand for the games. Huge.
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cranebump

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« Reply #80 on: July 01, 2017, 09:43:58 PM »
Quote from: Justin Alexander;972571
He makes the best games. Their success is bigly. Those storygame LOSERS just can't handle how... Did I mention that they're swine? Real swine. Oink. Oink. Like Rosie O'Donnell. There was a study done-- This is true. There was a study done that swine can't play a game unless they-- They can't even roll the dice, right? The dice. I own gold dice. They're the best dice. Lou Zocchi's dice are actually based on molds taken from my dice. He borrowed them from me back in 1973 when I was playing with him and Gygax and Marc Miller in Lake Geneva. I told him-- I told him, "Gary. I think you've got a winner here." That's what a real RPG looks like, right? Me, Marc, and Lou in a basement in Lake Geneva. Now, of course-- Forget the file cabinet. I play in Brazil. Boys of Brazil. They knew how to run a wargame. Don't-- Don't get into a game of Advanced Squad Leader with Adolf. That's what we used to say. Huge demand for the games. Huge.

That's rather good uncanny.:-)
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Voros
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« Reply #81 on: July 02, 2017, 12:22:27 AM »
Quote from: Justin Alexander;971919
No. You remain objectively wrong. Words mean things.

They do but no one can agree just what they mean. To claim they have 'objective' meaning is bizarre, to say the least.

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« Reply #82 on: July 03, 2017, 01:21:29 AM »
Quote from: Voros;972597
They do but no one can agree just what they mean. To claim they have 'objective' meaning is bizarre, to say the least.

I am forced to agree with your claim that the chrysanthemums have eaten the junipers, for the bizarre tornados have leaped over the frogs and swallowed their own tracheotomy.

(I make it a rule not to take obvious sophistry seriously.)
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Voros
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« Reply #83 on: July 03, 2017, 01:25:30 AM »
You've obviously never read a surrealist poem then.

Black Vulmea

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Anyone Else Here Run a Long-Term non-Fantasy Western Campaign?
« Reply #84 on: July 03, 2017, 03:35:58 AM »
Quote from: Voros;972739
You've obviously never read a surrealist poem then.

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« Reply #85 on: July 03, 2017, 04:17:40 AM »
Sorry were you the asshole quoting Hemingway out of context earlier?

Willmark

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« Reply #86 on: July 03, 2017, 12:23:26 PM »
Back on topic...

No, back in the day we never played Boot Hill even though I would have loved to have been in a campaign. Nowadays I work in an on again off again manner on my western themed RPG I wrote myself called Hurled into Eternity. What I really need to finish is the character classes which I've avoided for years.

For the most part it works and is based off using a deck of cards, no dice required. I should get working on it again.  

Also if a play by post pops up for Boot Hill let me know there pardners'

Kiero

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« Reply #87 on: July 03, 2017, 01:14:00 PM »
Quote from: flyingmice;970075
But you can Kiero! You can because there are no PCs in real history.

Backtracking, but just on this point, I see you and raise you one Demetrios Poliorketes. :D
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« Reply #88 on: July 04, 2017, 11:10:42 PM »
Quote from: Kiero;972834
Backtracking, but just on this point, I see you and raise you one Demetrios Poliorketes. :D

Ah yes! I remember him from that book by deCamp about the Rhodian sculptor! Polioketes was the "bad guy" in that book, so he was technically an NPC... ;D

But yes - when you look back some people really look like PCs! This one for sure! I have to agree with your point. :D
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Kiero

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« Reply #89 on: July 05, 2017, 04:27:14 AM »
Quote from: flyingmice;973195
Ah yes! I remember him from that book by deCamp about the Rhodian sculptor! Polioketes was the "bad guy" in that book, so he was technically an NPC... ;D

But yes - when you look back some people really look like PCs! This one for sure! I have to agree with your point. :D

Alfred Duggan wrote a similar style of novel, Elephants and Castles, but featuring Poliorketes as the main character. He's not exactly the hero, things seem to happen to him. He drinks himself to death in captivity, which seems a very PC way to go out.

He's also the villain (though of course he doesn't see himself that way) in the second main arc of Christian Cameron's Tyrant series. He's on the other side of a rough alliance of kings and states opposing the Antigonid dream of restoring Alexander's empire (under their banner).
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